


A Dream of You

by acornsandravens



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, I Don't Even Know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-18 08:57:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/877994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acornsandravens/pseuds/acornsandravens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gendry has to see her one last time before her wedding, but he has to find her first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dream of You

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. So this is based on a dream I had that begged to be interpreted as Arya/Gendry, and even though I'm fairly certain it makes absolutely no sense, I wrote it anyway and I'm posting it before I change my mind because I'm tired of looking at it. A little angst, a little fluff, a lot of ambiguity? R-rated. As always everything belongs to GRRM except my weird dream, and if you catch any typos let me know.

The announcement had been nailed to the gates of the settlement. The ink had already started to bleed from the creeping moisture of the spring mists and fogs blowing off of the marshlands to the west and the sea to the east, but Gendry could still make out most of the words if he studied them.

He could still remember sitting in the solar at Winterfell with the snow closing in around them while Arya taught him the shapes of the letters. It was the only time he could ever recall his lady being patient, taking the time to teach him to form the lines of his own name and how to read the books from Bran’s library.

It had all been a waste, though, hadn’t it? He was a bastard blacksmith. He didn’t need to know his letters. He would have been better off never knowing what the notice said.

All of the North was invited to Winterfell for a tourney celebrating the engagement of Arya Stark, with the wedding to follow.

The tourney would be Sansa’s doing.

The engagement? He could only find it in him to hold Arya to blame for that.

She could have said no, he thought, resisting the urge to tear the notice down and crush it under the heel of his boot, like that would somehow make it untrue.

 _He had been happy_. _They_ had been happy. Arya was finally home and he was starting to feel a little like he was, too. Her family was fair and kind to him, even when it was well known that he and Arya had a very improper relationship. He had thought that maybe no one would care, as long as she had come home alive and mostly whole.

He had been stupid, just like she had always said.

Gendry shared her bed, everyone knew. No one ever said a word, at least not to him. The servants would come in to start the fires in the morning and never so much looked surprised to see them tangled up under the blankets. She took his hand in front of the lords and ladies and gradually he had stopped fearing that someone was going to come along and chop it off to teach him what it meant to pretend at being highborn.

He had felt safe. He had been wrong.

“They want me to marry,” she had murmured, her eyes shining with the firelight. She had idly run her fingers over his bare chest, still heaving from making love to her.

“Wasn’t Sansa enough?” Arya’s sister had more than done her duty to the Stark name when she married her husband, almost old enough to have fathered her and rich as a Lannister besides. His coin had helped pay for rebuilding the walls and roofs around them, bringing back life to Winterfell while sapping it from Sansa, who had a vein of bitterness that sometimes peeked through the sweet.

They all made sacrifices, but surely it had to stop, and he told her as much lying comfortably naked in her bed. She’d done enough.

When Arya had kept silent in his arms he pulled back to look at her face, and it told him all he needed to know.

“You can’t be serious.” he pulled away from her and paced the floor, unable to process what she was suggesting. He couldn’t stay here in these cursed walls if Arya was what they cost to keep, he knew that at once.

“Gendry… I’m a Stark.” she offered, like that would take the hurt away or that it was a satisfactory explanation for breaking his heart.

“I haven’t forgotten,” he said bitterly, yanking on his pants on and searching under the bed for his shirt, pulling it on roughly. “I never forgot for a second that I was just the blacksmith you were using to keep your bed warm.” he lied.

She stood wrapped in a sheet between him and the door.

“I could rebuild the north.”

 Fuck the North and the South and all of it if he couldn’t be with her.

“ _We_ already rebuilt the north. You don’t have to trade your cunt for a few sellswords.”

Her palm stung his cheek.

“Don’t you dare speak to me like that.” his cheek was hot, and her eyes were cold.

“Tell them you won’t,” he whispered. “They won’t make you. Please. Arya, tell them that you won’t do it.” he had begged her.

 And she wouldn’t tell them no, not even for him. Not for herself.

So he had left. She had even cried when she asked him to stay, not to make her go through with it alone, but he couldn’t stand watching the parade of lords and overreaching knights and merchants come to make their offers like they were bidding for horses on market day. He had been too much of a craven to suffer through being there while someone came to take her away. He’d fought so hard to bring her back.

Now it seemed Lady Stark had finally made her decision.

When he went back to the forge the scroll was laying on his anvil, and the thick red wax that held the direwolf seal looked like blood.

He shouldn’t have been surprised that she knew where he had settled. She probably had sent a few of her men to find out where he had gone, since she had enough to spare for small errands now that she bargained herself away to gain swords. Staying in the North had been a mistake. He should have fled to the free cities like she had once, long ago.

The invitation read from House Stark, to Ser Gendry, knight of Hollow Hill. As if it hadn’t been bad enough to nail the announcement on every city gate in the North, they had brought one especially for him with _his name on it_ , to make sure he knew. _They_ wanted to remind him of everything he had left, he was certain. Not to actually _invite_ him, because it would be dreadfully awkward if he were to show up. Their dalliance had been no secret. Bad form to show up at the wedding and reopen the wounds.

He watched the parchment burn and vowed he would never return to Winterfell.

 

He almost hadn’t made it in time, and reached the castle gates mud spattered and saddle sore, his horse lathered from the final press after days of hard travel. He’d had too much time for thinking on the road and yet hadn’t been able to convince himself to do the wise thing and turn around. He knew he had to see her face, to make her look him in the eyes on last time before this could be done and over and he could go back to his forge and his misery. Every step that took him closer to her built the need inside of him, until it was a furious crescendo pounding in his chest.

As it was he couldn’t see her at all, so many had crowded under the silk tent and pressed against the dais. He could hear Sansa, speaking about how honored they were that Winterfell had been granted the opportunity to make such a fine match, and a murmur of agreement from Arya.

He pressed through the bodies while she spoke, desperately throwing his shoulders against the people standing between them, catching sharp elbows and curses for his efforts.

“Arya! Arya!”

A lord in a giant hat with a feathered plume turned to look at him with contempt, and Gendry bumped into the man roughly. He was only a matter of paces from the dais, from her, and yet she might have been across the sea for all the good it did him. Feather Hat turned his attention back to the platform, and created a wall of perfumed velvet, blocking him in. So Gendry crashed into him headlong, and the plumes jerked as the man went down. Gendry went over him in a tumble, avoiding the hands that grabbed for him and swiping them away with his fists.

“Seven Hells, get out of my way. Arya!” but his shouts were drowned out as the crowd cheered for the opening of the tourney, and the mass of people pressed tighter around him, shutting out his air. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t see.

And then the bodies parted and he saw the light of the lamps pouring over the high table, like a beam of sunlight coming through the clouds. The satin and silver glowed, and Sansa’s hair shone bright as flame. Her face fell as she spotted him, crawling his way through the dispersing crowd. Behind her was a knot of gowned ladies, closing in around a small form in grey silk that he would have known anywhere. They were bearing her away from him like a tide, and she was swept out of his reach. _So close_.

He fell onto his knees hard, and came eye level with Lady Sansa’s embroidered slippers.

“Why can’t I see her?” he was shouting, clutching at her hem like a beggar.

If she meant to answer him he’d never know. He saw only mail and gauntlets, yanking him to his feet and out of the tent. He broke free in the yard. These were faces he knew, and behind the visors of their helms- helms he had made- their eyes were pitying.

He grabbed for the nearest.

“Where is Arya?” he shook the man and his plate rattled, the jingling of the metal absurdly cheerful.

No one he asked offered an answer. They wouldn’t even meet his gaze. Not the smallfolk he had broken bread with, nor the lords and ladies that had pretended to like him well enough before Arya had made a proper match.

He cursed them all.

He ran across the courtyard, blindly crashing past guards and guests alike. She had likely been whisked into the Great Keep or the hall. He had no hope of reaching her there.

He had nearly given up his frantic, pointless hope of ever seeing her again. And then a cluster of ladies caught his eye, bright and out of place between the kitchens and the stables and anxiously searching the courtyard just as he was. Beyond them was the Hunter’s gate, the green of the Wolfswood looming dark outside the walls. And he knew, down to his very bones, that Arya was there.

He ran over the drawbridge, his footfalls echoing hollow in his ears. He pressed on until his chest ached and he could scarcely breathe. The path was not hard to follow- her gown snagged on the brush, and her slippers had poor traction on the wet earth and left furrows where she slid.

“Arya!”

 _The birds have even gone quiet_ , he thought, as he crashed into the clearing and stopped short.

Arya.

Her hands were busy with her gown as she stripped away the muddy material. Her shift was torn to the hip, the thin white fabric fluttering in the breeze and exposing her thighs.

She kicked the heap of fabric off and stood barefoot and naked in the grass, eyes on his all the while, a challenge there.

“Lay with me.” her voice was unsteady, likely she was as out of breath as he was. She looked solemn, scared, beautiful, with her hair done up in plaits like Sansa wore hers, long enough now to brush the pink tips of her breasts.

She laughed his name when he took her in his arms, and they sank to the ground together in a knot, her hand down the front of his breeches. Her lips were on his, desperate, hungry, parting in silent gasps when he drove himself inside of her. He was afraid he was hurting her, but her fingernails sank into his back and pulled him closer, deeper.

Afterwards he lay on the cold ground like a stone, sated and exhausted and with Arya against his chest. He wasn’t sure how he could feel so empty and so complete at the same time.

“You’re shaking.”

Frowning, she stuck out her hand and watched it quiver like a leaf in the breeze. When she stood her legs trembled.

“I thought it was you.”

His own fingers were clumsy as he helped her back into her stained gown and picked the leaves and bits of grass from her hair, the plaits half undone and falling down. He’d never seen anything as perfect as her.

There were tears on her cheeks, and he wiped those away and gave her a kiss for each of them. He wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying but she was smiling, at least, and she took his hand at last.

“Let’s go home.”

 

 

Sansa took off the heavy jeweled necklace and laid it on her vanity, rubbing the ache out of her neck. It had felt like it was shackling her, like a collar. Pouring herself a cup of wine, she savored the taste. Sharp, sweet, faintly spoiled below the fermentation. At some point she had learned to like the flavor, or maybe the rush to her head that followed.

She had a castle full of guests, highborn and common alike, all expecting a fine tourney, feasting, and a wedding. And Sansa found herself short of a bride. No one would begrudge her a bottle of Dornish red tonight, or in the days to come. She was going to have to smile her way through the tourney and smooth ruffled feathers at every corner of the realm, not to mention overseeing it all. The guests couldn’t be sent away, wedding or not.

Her men had gone into the Wolfswood at dusk, far enough to tell that Arya and Gendry had gone that way. Without a doubt they would loop around the keep and to one of the farms outside of Winter Town for horses and continue on from there. They would be spotted- Arya was a familiar face among the smallfolk. And they would find friends to spirit them away wherever they wished.

Sansa didn’t intend for that to happen. Arya’s place had always been in Winterfell, as had her own. But perhaps for one of them the walls wouldn’t need to become a cage. There was a part of her that she had steeled, though, just in case Arya and Gendry might make it out of her reach before she had a chance to tell them that. She wouldn’t blame them, but she would miss them.

She pulled the letter out of the pile of papers on her desk and poured on the wax, stamping it with her direwolf seal and burning her finger in the process. She sucked the injured digit absently while the wax set, a red stain against the parchment. White Harbor wouldn’t take the news gladly, but Sansa would soothe their hurts with gold and diplomacy, and succeed where Robb had failed in the realm of broken marriage contracts.

Sansa knew it was always possible to strike a bargain, but living with the terms was a different matter entirely.  

The second letter she gave to the head of her guard when he sought her in her chamber.

“See that it gets where it needs to go.”

“As it pleases my lady,” he whispered, his hand lingering on hers for a moment.

Sansa closed her eyes and savored the touch, as fleeting and bittersweet as it was.

Then he was gone, and she was left alone with her wine and her memories.

 

 

The smithy was quiet. The windows were black, as the fires had turned to cold ash days ago with no one left to tend them. Gendry risked lighting only a single candle, and he cupped his hand around the wick protectively to keep it from going out in a draft while he hurried around the room. Clothes, bedding, food, weapons, his best hammer. The rest would have to stay for the next wayward smith. They couldn’t stay more than a moment; someone was bound to be watching for them here.

Arya saw it first, out of place on the anvil.

“Gendry?”

She turned the scroll over in her hand. The red direwolf sigil caught the light, and for an instant the flickering candle turned the snarl into a smile.

The script was delicate and even, and as familiar to Arya as her own.

_We’ve already paid for the wedding._

_I’ll leave it to you to provide the groom._

_Your Loving Sister,_

_Sansa_

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
